s the bat. I suppose when I see
Mr. Kimball he'll make one of his jokes over bread-dough an' bats an'
batter, but I'll be too wore out to care. Did I say as Elijah said he'd
sleep at the store to-night?"

"Will--" cried Mrs. Lathrop, all of a sudden.

"Why, of course," said Susan, "it did n't hurt either loaf a mite. I'd
be as much of a fool as Jerusha Dodd if I let a little thing like a bat
spoil a whole bakin' of bread for me, Mrs. Lathrop. As for Elijah, he
did n't know nothin' about it an' I sha'n't tell him, you may be sure,
for he's the one as eats all the bread--I never touch it myself, as you
well know."

CHAPTER VI

THE EDITOR'S ADVICE COLUMN

"I'm a good deal worried over Elijah," Miss Clegg said to Mrs. Lathrop,
one day when the new paper was about three weeks old, and when the town
had begun to take both it and its editor with reasonable calm; "he does
have so many ideas. Some of his ideas are all right as far as I can see,
but he has 'em so thick an' fast that it worries me more'n a little. It
ain't natural to have new ideas all the time an' no one in this
community ever does it. He's forever tellin' me of some new way he's
thought of for branchin' out somewhere an' his branches make me more'n a
little nervous. The old ways is good enough for us an' I try to hold him
down to that idea, but first he wants me to get a new kind of flatirons
as takes off while you heat it, an' next he wants me to fix the paper
all over new.

"I brought over somethin' as he wrote last night to read you, an' show
you how curious his brains do mix up things. He brought it down this
mornin' an' read it to me, an' I asked him to give it to me to read to
you. I was goin' to bring it to you anyway, but then he said as I could
too, so it's all right either way. It's some of his new ideas an' he
said he'd be nothin' but glad to have you hear 'em 'cause he says the
more he lives with me the more respect he's got for your hearin' an'
judgment. He asked me what I thought of it first, an' I told him frank
an' open as I did n't know what under the sun to think of it. I meant
that, too, for I certainly never heard nothin' like it in my life afore,
so he said we could both read it to-day an' I could tell him what we
thought to-night, when he come home.

"Wh--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, with real interest.

"Well, seems he's been thinkin' as it's time to begin to show us how
up-to-date he looks on life, he says, an' as a consequence